


Convergence

by wynnebat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Canon, Beta Peter Hale, Complicated Relationships, Human Alpha Stiles Stilinski, M/M, Moral Ambiguity, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 14:25:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12655320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: A year and a month after the Hale fire, the Stilinski pack moves in.





	Convergence

**Author's Note:**

> Because I went through the alpha!Stiles tag & couldn't get enough, lol. This is just an open-ended random sort of experiment I did while having all those alpha!Stiles feels.

There’s someone new in Peter’s hospital room. It makes him twitchy, but the only outward sign that he he can give is a slight tensing if his muscles. If he tries, he can move his fingers some, but not enough to even grasp anything. The pattern of the visitor's footsteps is a deliberate one, but it's not the bored but dutiful walk of Peter’s rotation of nurses. A creak, a drag—the guest is sitting down in the visitor’s chair after moving it from the wall to Peter's bedside. Peter tries with all his might to turn his head, but his still-healing eyes are pointed at the ceiling. Outside the occasional child playing hide and seek while the brat’s parents visit someone else, and the Santas and carolers who came by around Christmas, he hasn’t had a visitor in the entire time he’s been in this half-awake, half-not state. It’s no use identifying the visitor by scent; not only does the scarring interfere with his sense of smell, but the smells of hospital-grade cleaning agents confuse his senses and whatever medication he’s on dulls the rest.

For one stupid moment, he wonders if it is Laura or Derek sitting there. He’d heard from the nurses that the two of them had been the only others to survive the fire. They’d stayed in Beacon Hills for three weeks after the fire, until it looked like Peter’s condition wasn’t something that was going to change soon if at all, and then they’d fucked off to New York. Peter knows their reasons, knows their pain, but trapped here with no distraction except the thoughts in his head, he’s not feeling very charitable. He’s always been his own worst enemy.

Fate, of course, is never that kind. Neither Laura nor Derek would wait so long to start rambling at him.

It’s only when the visitor speaks that Peter recognizes him.

“You’re more alert than I realized you would be,” says a man’s voice.

In his head, Peter’s snarling, roaring, clawing, but his body doesn’t move with him. At most, his hands twitch.

“Definitely more alert than your nurses think you are,” the man hums. “Do you know who I am?”

Peter’s half mad, but he’d recognize that voice anywhere. He assumes the slight movement of his fingers is enough of a yes. What he wouldn’t give to just form some claws. It wouldn’t be enough—Peter’s never been sure if him at peak strength would be enough—but at least he wouldn’t be as pitifully weak lying here next to Stiles Stilinski.

He’s painfully aware of the fact that these next moments could be his last. Stiles has never been needlessly cruel, but Peter's mind is running faster than it has since he’d woken up, chasing strands of intellect in a sea of grief and pain. There aren’t many reasons for Stiles to be at his bedside. Paralyzed this way, all Peter can do is hope time and greed hasn’t made a monster of this man.

“Stop getting all twitchy. I’m not here to kill you.” No blip in his heartbeat, but Peter would never rely on that with him. “I normally wouldn’t do this to anyone who hasn’t given me consent, but we don’t exactly have a lot of options. I’m going to touch your hand and see if I can coax your mind to talk to mine.”

Peter isn’t given the time to try to rage at him. Stiles takes his scarred hand in both of his own and pulls at something deep inside Peter. Peter pulls back, snarls at the voice that says _stop that_ , and then he’s stumbling into a void of nothingness with Stiles, their hands still attached. Peter breaks the grip easily now, but the image remains. In the void of nothingness, there is just the two of them. Peter looks away from Stiles long enough to see himself in a comfortable v-neck and jeans, his body unscarred. Stiles looks almost exactly like Peter remembers him. His penchant for plaid long sleeves hasn’t changed. Time hasn't made him hideous, either. The man must be twenty-three now to Peter's twenty-seven, if Peter is correct, and unfortunately he has little doubt of it.

“What did you do to me?” Peter asks, his voice tight. He can’t feel any pleasure at being able to speak out loud to another person for the first time since the fire, not when it’s a man he knows he can’t trust.

There’s no tension in Stiles’ body language. He holds himself tall, but his hands are caught by his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. It's an obvious ploy to get Peter to relax and mirror his casual stance, but Peter can't flush the stress from his body.

“Relax, I’m just visiting your mind for a bit," Stiles tells him.

Peter curls his lip. “How exactly is that supposed to relax me?”

“It isn’t, but there’s nothing I can really do to fix that. I need to speak to you and the conversation would be much too one-sided for my taste with you in your current state. Also, to reiterate, I’m not going to kill you or hurt you. When we’re done talking, I’ll leave your mind and it’ll be in the exact state it was before I left it. Come on. You know I like your brain; I wouldn’t do anything to it.”

Peter forces himself to give the man that much, because it was clear that whether he believed Stiles or not, this conversation was going to happen. And Stiles did like his brain, so Peter had little qualms in introducing the topic that had brought this man to him. “I gather it’s been just over one year since a Hale alpha stepped foot in this territory."

Even in the face of Peter's wariness, Stiles grins at him. It's still as devastating as it was a year ago, the chaos in that grin, the way he looks so obviously pleased with Peter. "You're my favorite Hale, you know that?"

"There's quite a bit less competition now," Peter replies. He tries to go for glib, but he knows he's probably failing. He wonders what else Stiles can sense in Peter's mind. His emotions, his thoughts? He could ask, but he wouldn't trust the answer Stiles would give him anyway. There's a part of him that wants to trust Stiles—has wanted to trust him for ages—but he pushes it down as he always does. "But I'm glad to hear you haven't been consorting with my niece or nephew in my absence."

"Never," Stiles tells him, his grin fading, but a shade of something kind remaining on his face. "They'd never compare. I’m truly sorry about your family, as sorry as an opportunistic asshole like me can get. But I’m fiercely glad you survived. Believe that much, please."

Peter inclines his head. There hadn't been another Hale with whom Stiles had spent time out of his own volition. "I know. I don't suppose your sympathy is enough to keep you from taking the Hale territory as your own."

"No," Stiles says. There's no apology in his voice, but there's no arrogance over his gain, either.

"The Tribunal won't be sympathetic when the investigation happens, and you can't imagine you can avoid one. You're taking lands that have belonged to the Hales for generations when the Hale name still lives on, especially since I felt the alpha power pass on."

"To Laura," Stiles fills in.

It's not much of a surprise. "I hadn't assumed it would go to Derek."

"He isn't growing up bad, from what I've seen. He's getting all big and growly now after another growth spurt." Stiles rolls on his feet, fidgety even without a proper body to fidget with.

Peter feels his claws form without any conscious effort. Through clenched teeth, he hisses, "Stay away from my pack." He shouldn't threaten Stiles—it's preposterous given his situation—but he can't help the words all the same.

“My pack has kept our distance,” Stiles says, raising his hands. But the man doesn't come in peace. “We kept just enough of a watch to make sure we could prove to the Tribunal that Laura abandoned the land, if the matter came to that. None of us have even made contact with them.”

“You wouldn’t want to remind them of your pack,” Peter surmises. The reminder of Stiles would be a reminder of just how tense their packs used to be before what happened. It hadn't been war—both of their packs had been too civilized for that—but it had been something.

“True. And frankly, they’ve had enough pain without having to come back here to defend lands they don’t even want.”

“How kind of you, truly," Peter drawls.

“What can I say, I’m a good samaritan. These lands need care and protection and they're not getting it. It'll be one of my better arguments to the Tribunal, not that I'm legally in the wrong. In the past year, I haven't stepped foot in or meddled in a single matter in Beacon Hills proper or the rest of the Hale territory, nor have I influenced the remaining pack members in any way. I've stuck to the letter of our law. There's no grounds for calling this an illegal occupation."

"Except for the moral outcry you'll get when sympathetic packs realize you've taken it from two traumatized children."

"They're both overage. Laura's older than I was when I became an alpha. If she's old enough to inherit the power, she's old enough to decide what to do with it. She left her pack lands and hasn't returned here for a full year. She can't plead ignorance."

"Talia would've taught her our laws," Peter agrees. He doesn't bother lying; it would be easy enough for Stiles to prove what Talia had taught her daughter. And ignorance has never been an excuse the Tribunal has seen favorably. "She was being trained to succeed my sister. But what she can plead is trauma and shortsightedness and the fact that no clan will want this precedent set."

"There's already a precedent."

"Three hundred years ago?"

"Only two-seventy," Stiles sniffs.

And it's almost like nothing happened, like they're two men at a weres conference standing at the edges of a room, talking too long to be unnoticed but neither being able to make themselves stop. A year ago, Peter had been Talia's enforcer and Stiles had been the most enticing man he’d ever met. The Stilinski pack was young and ruthless and as strong as any older pack. Peter had been rightfully wary of them, but he hadn’t been angry like Talia at the way they’d been slowly encroaching in on the land near their territory. He'd been too busy being intrigued. Nothing could have happened between them, not as entrenched they’d both been in their own pack politics and in the greater supernatural political sphere, but Peter had wanted him, desperately.

Still, reality poisons the moment easily. "So tell me, Stiles, what are you going to do with the last Hale left on these grounds?"

Stiles straightens minutely, determination in every line of his body. "I'm going to give you some choices and you're going to choose. Option one: I can send you straight to your alpha. Proximity to her should stabilize your pack bonds and expedite your healing process."

If Laura doesn't ship him off immediately, Peter thinks, rather uncharitably. A part of him still loves those two, but it's a painful sort of love, and he doesn't think he can take being dropped off on their doorstep when it's clear Laura has chosen to remove him from her life. There's a whole country between them now, with her on the other coast, and it feels like too much land to have to cross.

"The next option," Peter says.

"I can get you transferred to a different hospital, one outside of this territory. It will take you longer to heal, but the fact that you're awake now means your body will follow eventually." There's a look of distaste on Stiles' face as he gives the option. "It could take years."

Peter doesn't like that one much, either. The first would hurt his pride, but at least it would save him from being trapped in the coffin of his own body. "Any other options?"

"Yeah," Stiles says, smiling a little. "Come to the dark side, Peter Hale.”

Peter snorts. “I’ve heard this speech before.”

“I wasn’t serious then. Or I was—I would’ve snapped you up in a heartbeat—but I knew full well you were too loyal to your sister’s pack to even pretend to consider it.”

“It wasn’t loyalty, exactly,” Peter says, because losing his pack has left a hole inside him, but even before then there was something empty there. “We weren’t exactly the closest, my sister and I. At one point all that tied us together was pride. I wasn’t going to leave unless she grew some balls and finally kicked me out. She wasn’t going to dishonor the memory of our parents as much as she wished she could. One of us would’ve broken eventually.” He stops, a little for emphasis, a little because he’s just so pissed off at this stupid world. “We never got the chance.”

“I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t mean much, coming from me, but I am. I’m not making this offer out of pity or a misplaced sense of duty. I don’t owe Talia anything and I sure as hell don’t owe Laura. I want you because you’re brilliant and ruthless and have never backed down from anything I've thrown at you. I want you in my pack, always have.”

“As your beta, I would have to back down,” Peter replies, unamused. There is a difference between not yielding to the alpha of a rival pack and one’s own alpha.

“You’ll have to listen to me when it comes to the important things, but I always take the opinions of my betas into account. I’m not— you’re never going to have to kneel for me. We’re not a traditionalist pack.”

“No, you aren’t.” Not with the many rumors Peter has collected about Stiles' pack.

"You'd fit right in. You'd heal much faster, too, with a full network of pack bonds to ease the pain and give you strength."

It's appealing in a way. Peter tries to look at him and see a future, but all he can see is betrayal. His own, to his dead pack for pledging his loyalty to another, and Stiles’, because Peter’s been betrayed enough by the alphas in his life. Talia had loved him, but she’d left him out to dry when she couldn’t publicly approve of what she’d ordered him to do. And Laura, she was a child and grieving, but Laura just left him here in Beacon Hills, sitting here in the hospital under the his own name, a gift for any codeless hunter dropping by. “I don’t know if I can give you the answer you clearly want.”

There’s some reproach in Peter’s tone, but Stiles isn’t deterred. “I’m not going to mince words with something this important. I don’t take just anyone into my pack.”

“Flattery, really?”

“Really. If you want me to flatter you some more, once you’re on your feet, I can help you get revenge on the hunters who did this to your family. You can track them down yourself or I can drop them off on your doorstep with a bow. I’d do it anyway—the hunter community obviously needs a reminder that this shit isn’t alright—but it wouldn’t be as good without you. I can give you revenge. And if this doesn’t work out, I'll let you leave.”

“Would you, just like that? I know an alpha's instinct well enough. Once I agree to be yours, you’ll try your damnedest to keep me, whether you particularly like me or not.”

“I do particularly like you and I do want to keep you, but the rest of my betas would never agree to let me keep someone who didn’t want to be kept. If I somehow became that bad, even my favorite one would stab me in the back. Or the front, really, since I’m sure she’d want to make sure I knew who was stabbing me.” Stiles trails a hand through his hair, his eyes wild and sincere. “But I can talk as much as I want and I still can’t completely convince you with words. You can’t hear my lies out this way.”

“I wouldn’t trust that with you even if I could,” Peter says with a huff. Honestly, if anyone trusts their ears around Stiles Stilinski, they deserve to get them cut off.

(It brings to mind an evening that feels so long ago, perhaps two months before the fire. Peter had been doing reconnaissance according to what he told Talia, but he was halfway drunk two states over in no man’s land with his target nearly as inebriated as Peter.

“Catch me in a lie,” Stiles had said, because Peter had already realized the man could control his heartbeat. Peter had agreed anyway, asking all sorts of questions and listening to the steady beat of Stiles’ heart as Stiles told him about growing up on Mars. In the middle of his speech about how hard it was to adjust to life as an earthling, Peter had taken hold of one of Stiles’ gesturing hands and smirked at the blip in his heartbeat.

“Caught you,” he’d said.

“But not in a lie.”

“No,” Peter had agreed, his eyes dark with something that was reflected in Stiles’ own. “Not in a lie.”

And then he’d let go, because to go any further would’ve ended up with them both caught in something they couldn’t control. Not that they were controlling themselves very well anyway. Stiles was an enemy, there wasn’t any doubt in Peter’s mind, but Christ he’d wanted him anyway. As dangerous and ambitious as Stiles was, Peter still wanted to fuck him almost as much as he wanted to beat him at his game.)

There's a possibility of Peter being able to use the time it will take for him to heal to get leverage on Stiles' pack, then leave him for Laura and Derek. But it's a scant possibility that he throws out as soon as it crosses his mind. An alpha and two betas wouldn't be enough to take down Stiles' pack. Peter's never been sure how many members it has, but it's enough for that arrogance of his to be well-earned. He can have Laura seek help from the nearby packs, but going through the Tribunal would fail, and no packs are closely allied enough to the Hales to go to war over this. If and when Peter leaves Stiles' pack, it would mean leaving Beacon Hills for good to whatever Stiles wants to do with the territory. Right now, pride aside, he wouldn't mind never seeing this place again. He doesn't think he can even walk its streets without remembering how his family burned.

Stiles is getting a lot out of the Hale pack's demise, as Peter's well aware. Peter doesn't quite believe it, because it's a low he doubts Stiles would sink to. The man has always been happy to stab you in the back, but he isn't cruel, and as far as Peter knows, Stiles would never stoop to the murder of innocents, no matter how much he could gain. Peter has to believe that much. Still, it has to be said. “If I find you had anything to do with the fire, I’ll rip your throat out.”

Stiles looks at him, his expression serious, and nods sharply. “I’ll prove to you I didn’t.

“The only way I’d trust you is with time and action, and we don’t have either right now.” Peter faces Stiles' gaze with a determination of his own. "But I don’t need to trust you to join your pack. I just need to trust your sense of vengeance and the fact that you’d allow me to kill every last hunter responsible for the murder of my pack. And that? I do.” He’d heard what happened to the clan that had killed Stiles’ father a year before the man had even formed a pack. Talia had been shaken and furious, but Peter hadn’t been able to feel any kinship with wolves who’d kill a human as brutally as the they had. He and Stiles had different priorities in everything else, but in this, they agreed.

Stiles doesn't hide the satisfaction in his gaze. He takes a step closer and offers in an offhand sort of way, “Do you want some more time to think it over?”

“I’ve had a whole year,” Peter tells him. “It’s more than enough. Do it.”

He steels himself for Stiles' touch, light as it is when Stiles' hand meets his to take them back to the real world.

"I know you're not in this because you want to be mine," Stiles says, his face so close. "But until you heal and get your revenge, I'm going to spend every day trying to convince you to stay."

"I'm sure you'll change your mind," Peter replies with a shake of his head. "I'm rather willful. Stubborn. Independent. Talia's worst nightmare, really."

"Don't count on it," Stiles tells him. His hand is tight around Peter's, his gaze heavy even without the bond between an alpha and a beta. Somehow, in the year that Peter's been gone, the rivalry that has always been present in their interactions has changed on Stiles' side. He doesn't have the look of an alpha satisfied with the gain of land or a Hale pack member to give him some legitimacy or even the nemeton in the middle of the Hale territory. But Peter has enough to concern himself over without restarting his efforts to figure out this man.

He blinks and he's staring up at the ceiling again.

"I accept you into my pack, Peter Hale," Stiles says from beside him, his hand careful with Peter's scarred skin as he continues his hold on.

In the dark, painful spot of Peter's mind, something bright and shining forms.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm also on tumblr as @[crownwithoutstones](https://crownwithoutstones.tumblr.com/).


End file.
